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Doc HM · Mar 1, 2010, 03:19 PM

Apologies for this link as it's cached from Google, the live page is now down, but, really? WTF?

Photographers to lose copyright and right to take photographs in public | PhotoActive

In short the UK Govt wants to remove the automatic right of copyright on all created works. Unless a photographer etc registers every single image they shoot (for a fee natch) with a new govt agency, they loose copyright. Nice one.

In addition we loose the right to take photos in a public place and anyone appearing in any photo taken in a public place can sue the photographer for damages etc if they appear in such an image.

text from page to save clicking:

This startling and outrageous proposal will become UK law if The Digital Economy Bill currently being pushed through Parliament is passed. This Bill is sponsored by the unelected Government Minister, Lord Mandelson.

Let’s look at the way this law will affect your copyright:

The idea that the author of a photograph has total rights over his or her own work – as laid out in International Law and The Copyright Act of 1988 – will be utterly ignored. If future, if you wish to retain any control over your work, you will have to register that work (and each version of it) with a new agency yet to be set up.

Details about how this agency will be set up – and what fees will be charged for each registration – have been kept deliberated vague in Lord Mandelson’s Bill. If ever there was a licence to print money, this is it. You will pay.

If they are not registered with this quango agency, your images can be plundered and used anywhere, by anyone – on the understanding that the thief makes a very minimal effort to find you – the author of the image.

Currently, International Law, through the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, recognises the ownership rights of the creator of the ‘property’. This enables image owners to control how their work is used, and whether it is used at all.

International Law will be ignored by the British Government and this new Act will overturn more than 150 years of UK copyright law.

If ever there was a massive step forward to a police state and suppression of information, this is it. Most of this thieves’ charter is not even going through Parliament as primary legislation. The Digital Economy bill Section 42 sections 16a, 16b, 16c enable ad hoc regulation by Mandelson’s office without further legislation. None of that will never be voted on.

Lord Mandelson works in devious ways – he’s clever.

The Government is determined to push through this legislation without amendment by May 6th – certainly before the date of the General Election.

You can find out much more about how the your photographs can be used by going to Copyright Action. This article exposes the devious detail in this Bill and just how it will affect you as a photographer.

Copyright Action

Photographers are to lose all effective rights to take photographs in public places.

Not content with taking away photographer’s copyright, another section of this Government is proposing sweeping changes to your freedom to take pictures in public places.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has deemed that a photograph taken in a public place may now be considered to contain ‘private data’.

This means that if you take a picture in the street and there is a member of the public in the shot, that person has the right to demand either payment – if you wish to publish the image – or that you do not publish it. In fact, according to the ICO. There does not actually have to be an objection, it is up to the photographer to ‘judge’ whether the subject might object. Now work that one out if you can.

Applied to professional photographers, this is, of course, the perfect charter for politicians, crooks, and bent officials to avoid being photographed and exposed. How many working press photographers will find themselves in court?

How easily will politicians’ nefarious behaviour be revealed for all to see?

How many innocent amateur photographers are going to be harassed and menaced by people in the street?

No matter that Britain has more CCTV cameras watching our every move than any other country in the world, in future, if you take a photograph in a public place and that image is published on the likes of Flickr – you could be liable to prosecution.

Write to your MP NOW and object to these outrageous constraints of your rights and freedom. Remember, there is very little time left.